


The Fault in His Stars

by HopeCoppice



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley Created the Stars (Good Omens), IDK it's not that sad really but Crowley is very mournful, M/M, Melancholy, Other, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Sad with a Happy Ending, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), canon-typical relationship ambiguity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:40:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28740378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeCoppice/pseuds/HopeCoppice
Summary: For a long time, Crowley has wondered what he got wrong. Aziraphale wasn't aware that it bothered him.(Absolutely nothing to do with the John Green novel of a similar name, I just couldn't resist the title.)
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 37
Kudos: 119





	The Fault in His Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Just another little thinky thing. Enjoy!

They’re sitting together on the bench in the garden of their lovely little cottage on the South Downs, gazing absently out at the night, when Crowley sighs.

“I wish I knew what I’d done wrong.”

Aziraphale doesn’t know what to make of that, at first - Crowley has a wide variety of alleged reasons for Falling, but he’s always thought they were just _excuses._ He’s never stopped to imagine that perhaps even Crowley doesn’t know what it was that got him cast out. He opens his mouth to speak, but before he can make a sound Crowley glances across and shakes his head. It’s a relief; he doesn’t know what he would have said, anyway.

“Not that, angel. I know why I Fell.” He turns his face upwards again, towards the sky, and sighs once more. “I mean, with the stars.”

“What do you mean? There’s nothing wrong with them. They’re beautiful, Crowley, truly beautiful.” But Crowley doesn’t seem soothed.

“They were supposed to last forever. I didn’t make them all - there was a whole department on stars, you know that. But mine… mine have been burning up. I look up, and they’re not there.”

“Oh. Oh, I see.”

“It doesn’t… I suppose it doesn’t concern me any more. And it’s not as if there aren’t enough to see by; nobody else’s stars seem to be dying. But I’m sorry to see mine go.”

Aziraphale wrestles with himself for a full minute before replying; is it kinder to tell him the truth, or to let him go on looking up and wondering what fault he’d inadvertently built into his design? Fortunately, Crowley seems to be lost in his own thoughts, so Aziraphale is given plenty of time to consider his next words before he releases them tentatively into the night air.

“It’s not… a fault.” Crowley whips round at that, yellow eyes searching his face for answers, and he holds up his hands in a gesture of peace. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know if you’d want to-” No, that’s not true. Crowley has _always_ wanted to know _everything_. “I didn’t realise it bothered you so.”

“What? What do you know about my stars? Why are they dying? Why just mine?”

“You were the only starmaker to Fall, weren’t you?” Aziraphale takes a deep breath, knowing that what he’s about to say will hurt Crowley immeasurably. “When you Fell… Heaven started hunting down your creations, everything demons had made, and destroying them. Most hadn’t made much - a few species of bird, a handful of insects, some lizards - but _you…_ you made rather a lot of stars, didn’t you?”

“Thousands,” Crowley whispers, and Aziraphale can see the grief etched into every line of his face. “And they all have to die because of me.”

The humans, Aziraphale knows, tend to regard the stars as pretty lights in the sky, or as giant soulless balls of gas and flame, or as the nebulous hope of some other life beyond their world. Some believe that their ancestors look down through the stars’ twinkling eyes, and in some respects those humans are probably the closest to understanding what the stars mean to Crowley. Looking at him now, it’s easy to see that he regards his stars as his children as much as his masterpieces. And he’s doomed them all.

“No,” Aziraphale tells him firmly, and he opens all his eyes on every plane, searching the sky until he finds what he’s looking for, what he knows Crowley needs to see. “No, Crowley. Look.”

He points, and Crowley gives his shoulders a little shake as if he’s shrugging off his corporation, extending his own infernal senses towards the sky. Aziraphale keeps pointing, waits for Crowley to understand.

“Oh.” The demon frowns. “New stars? I didn’t think there was going to be any more creation.”

“They’re not created.” Aziraphale lowers his hand as soon as he’s confident that Crowley is looking, tangles their fingers together gently. “Those stars were born from the death of the star that was once there. Michael was always complaining about it - they can’t kill them, no matter how hard they try. They snuff out one star, and the gases, the stardust you formed them from… they create new stars. The humans have noticed, too. Stellar nurseries, they call them.”

“My stars… have descendants?” Crowley is staring upwards so intently now that he seems a hair’s breadth from ascending into the cosmos himself, as if to get a closer look. His eyes dart about, falling upon star after star that wasn’t there when he helped lay out the constellations, his breath catching as he finds each new cluster. “They’re not dead?”

“They live on, Crowley. They will forever,” Aziraphale assures him, “even more than you made in the first place.”

Crowley doesn’t say anything for a long time, after that, drinking in all that he’s just discovered, and then he turns to Aziraphale.

“Thank you, angel. All this time…” He trails off, overwhelmed, and Aziraphale smiles. He understands how important this is to Crowley, now. He understands that Crowley has mourned each lost star and, now, has found that they had a sort of _family,_ a lineage directly from his talented hands to some of the most beautiful stars in the sky.

“Think nothing of it, my dear. Now, how do you feel about some cocoa before bed?”

And Crowley, not bothering to hide his smile, offers his arm to escort Aziraphale back into the kitchen.

They sip their cocoa by the window, faces still turned up towards the night sky.


End file.
